Book Review: Dangerous Minds

Book: Dangerous Minds
Author: S Hussain Zaidi and Brijesh Singh
Publisher: Penguin Random House India
224 pages
Rs: 167

Life stories of criminals always fascinate. What their childhood and relationships were like, what made them turn to crime — a large corpus of books and films address these.

Dangerous Minds is written on similar lines. It tells the story of Jalees Ansari, the Malegaon doctor involved in 80 blasts; Fahmida Sayed, a housewife who supported her husband and help-ed plant bombs, including the ones at Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar in 2003; Abu Faisal, head of SIMI in Madhya Pradesh, who executed a series of bank robberies to fund terror attacks; and Abdul Karim Telgi, the man behind the `2,100 crore stamp paper scam.

Then there's Saqib Abdul Hameed Nachan, deemed to be the main conspirator in 2002-03 Mumbai serial blasts.

The book shows us how some of these criminals were well-read and used the Internet. SIMI members, for instance, communicated through messages left in the draft folder; and Areeb Majeed, a young boy from Mumbai, used social media to make his way to Syria and join ISIS. Written in an easy, narrative style by investigative journalist S Hussain Zaidi and IPS officer Brijesh Singh, the book is divided into eight chapters. Each tells the story of one criminal mastermind behind a heinous or large-scale crime, lately in the news. Much of the information is available in the public domain, but the authors supplement it with charge-sheets, recorded statements, investigation reports, interviews, court evidence and judgements. The book also sheds light on the functioning of law enforcing agencies.

Although the book shows sensitivity in portraying how, often, families opposed the turn to crime, the fact that all those featured are Muslim, reinforces communal bias. Surely there are criminals in other communities, who could have been included, no?